jake14mw said:
SageBrush said:
...
I doubt you can extrapolate what works in a e-bicycle to a car; and as I have mentioned the refurb experience in the Prius was really poor.
In any case, the warranty will tell the tale.
By all means though -- Be My Guest.
Can you please point us to some information on the Prius refurb batteries? There should be enough data on those to give us an idea what to expect. Has it been documented as to what the refurb process is for most of those? My daughter has had a refurb battery in her Prius for about a year and a half (I think), no problems yet, but the cost of that was about 25% of the cost of a new one, not 50% like this one. Thanks.
When our 2002 Prius gave us the dreaded triangle battery warning we happened to be just beyond the warranty coverage (8 years or 100,000 miles, I forgot which). If we had the dealer replace the battery pack with new, together with labor,if I remember correctly, the price was at the high end of $3000 something, close to $4000. Even with new battery pack, the dealers warranty was only one year after installation.
At the time, our Budget was tight so I looked around and found a company that took gen 2 Prius cells from newer cars that had an accident, or purchased on the internet, cleaned them up, balanced them, then installed the newer cells in the cleaned up “refurbished” pack of our 2002. Cost a little over $2000 with a one year warranty.
At the time we just needed the Prius to last at least one more year, but it is still running 3 1/2 (CORRECTION make that 6 1/2 ) years later!
We don’t drive it as much now, only 4000-7000 miles a year, but it worked for our needs.
Note: the garage checked each of the newer cells and if the cell didn’t meet certain quality or capacity, they did not use. I image that the quality or capacity requirement for a pure EV pack vs a hybrid pack might be different.